These documents and photographs were found in a box
in the attic by the great grandson of Johannes Colsman. It is his
hope that by making them available to those interested in the
village of Kobylnik, he is making an historical contribution to the
understanding of current events between 1915 and 1917.

Though most of the written documents in the archive
box are military in nature, he was interested in the local culture
and there are photographs and postcards of people, landscape and
architecture.

"When I first found the mementos of his past, I had no idea what to
think. My idea was, to find out what is the meaning of the fragments
of the past that came to me, and now, the unnoticed old box contains
connections to people all over the world, and to history far away
from our daily life. A little bit a story like the tale from Rip Van
Winkle.